Power Rangers Brings Asian American Poverty Front and Center

By the time the Power Rangers craze first swept through in the early ’90s, I was just starting college, paying $290 a month in rent for a studio apartment in the Whittier neighborhood of South Minneapolis with a bed that pulled down from a wall, going to see Hong Kong flicks like Swordsman II and The Bride with White Hair Fridays at midnight, organized by Asia Media Access. I was still into nerd shit, but honestly the Power Rangers seemed, to me, corny and commercial. I thought it was funny that the Black Ranger was Black, the Yellow was a Vietnamese woman, and the Pink Ranger was a white woman.

My love of all things nerd grew in Phillips: Minnesota’s largest, poorest, and most racially diverse neighborhood, not all that far from my college apartment. As refugees from war with not a lot of money to spare, I learned to walk to the Franklin Avenue library where reading and checking out books was free. Comic books were less than a dollar, and watching television shows like Robotech and Dungeons and Dragons just meant having the discipline to wake up in time. I had friends of all colors and genders and backgrounds, and bullies of all colors and backgrounds. Things were difficult for us since my family were among that first wave of refugees that became the first large visible concentration of Asian American people in Minnesota. But there was also joy, and love, and friendship to go along with all the pain and conflict.

Flash forward to 2017.

I’m a father to a seven year old who, despite her friends and their tastes, doesn’t like stuff like Power Rangers because she dislikes fighting. My parents are still in Phillips, and I live in Central, still not that far away. To my child, I have to figure out a way to explain everything: the loud sharp popping noises she sometimes hears outside, the police sirens and their flashlights sweeping the yards, why some people seem to have so much and some people don’t have homes to live in even when it’s freezing cold. I am exhausted and overwhelmed and slightly depressed so I want to go see some dumb action movie. So I decide to go see the new Power Rangers flick.

That being said, in the face of the MCU’s overwhelming white maleness and the nonstop Ghost-in-the-Shell–style whitewashing, I was impressed with the film’s attempt to create a diverse core team. The crew includes two women — both of whom are women of color, one of whom is queer — an African American male on the Autism spectrum; and a Chinese American male from a working class family.

The latter was genuinely surprising, because I don’t recall seeing another example of a working class Asian American male (who isn’t a miscellaneous triad member or something) in a mainstream Western fictional film.

We’re all familiar with the model minority myth — the false notion that Asian Americans have somehow pulled themselves up from their bootstraps to be successful, a strategy used by conservatives and racists to dismiss racism, particularly against — but not limited to — Black people. When the statistics are broken down, one quickly sees that the higher amount of money per household hides the fact that the majority of Asian Americans are concentrated in more expensive cities with higher median wages but also higher living expenses; and how a small percentage of Asians who are successful and which often renders the more massive Asian American populations that are disadvantaged are usually in the top percentile from the country of which they are emigrating from, and due to racist immigration policies, are usually the ones most often allowed into this country at all.

And despite statistics that show that Asian American poverty and educational disparity is growing faster than ever, there is still a perception that all Asians have relative privilege, especially as it relates to class. In popular culture, Asian Americans are most often found as privileged villains, from Rick Yune’s malicious Vietnamese Chinese wannabe gangster at war with Vin Diesel’s working class and multiracial crew in the first Fast & Furious film, to the Asian man complicit in anti-Blackness in the surprise hit Get Out. While of course Asian Americans can and do participate in white supremacy and classism, it seems like that’s the only role Asian Americans occupy in the Western imagination.

Let me say that cross racial hostility is more than a theory to me — it’s trauma from my upbringing, from all sides. I’m not going to get into it because I don’t want this to be poverty porn, and why is it that Asian Americans are always forced to defend their experiences anyway? The point is, yes, there was conflict and misunderstanding. But it sure as hell wasn’t coming from just one direction. Yet it seems like, no matter how much we break down the model minority stereotype and insist we don’t believe in hierarchies of oppression, most people tacitly believe that Asian Americans are the most privileged people of color, and often our pop culture reflects that belief.

I wish I could say the Power Rangers movie is going to change all that, but it’s not. While it’s surprisingly decent, especially the parts concerning the teenagers bonding and conflicting, it’s still a flat and superficial experience. All of the characters need a lot more development and better writing. That being said, to see Ludi Lin’s Zack, a Chinese American speaking in English and Chinese, who lives in a trailer park, who cares for his mother and kicks ass as a part of a diverse crew, from a poor family — this is not a representation that should be rare, but it is.

Pop culture and mass media have a tremendous amount of influence — they touch our lives even if we resist them. I wanted nothing to do with Power Rangers when I was younger, but I knew who they were. Asians and Americans make convenient villains in Hollywood, an industry notorious for its dismissal of its racism towards us, so it’s hard to see any hope for change.

But there’s that working class Chinese American hero in this new movie, and we can hope he and the others get more character development in the inevitable sequels, and we can take comfort that the movie, with its diverse cast, is winning over the blatant whitewashed Hollywood tripe that continues to erase and demonize us.

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Published by baophi

Bao Phi has been a performance poet since 1991. He is a published poet, spoken word champ, Program Director at the Loft, and lifelong nerd. Raised in a Vietnam refugee family in Phillips, Minnesota, he's been on HBO Def Poetry, published in Best American Poetry as well as his own poetry book by Coffee House Press, and has published both online and on the page essays on a wide range of topics from Asian Americans in video games, police brutality, hip hop, and zombie apocalypse. He was named Best Spoken Word Artist by the Star Tribune and an Artist of the Year by City Pages. He's working on a radical Vietnamese American zombie novel.
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8 comments

I’d just been studying the numbers on Asian American poverty a few days ago. It was very enlightening and I Thank you for sharing your story with us.
That said, I’ve never been a Power Rangers fan, but I know enough because my little sisters were. I’ve heard a lot about this films diversity, so I plan to check it out.

Reblogged this on Maya's and Sam's Dad and commented:
I like this post. It does discuss some very important issues facing the Asian American community as well and the need for a greater, more nuanced representation of our diversity and a realistic presentation of our various challenges.

Well written, I really enjoyed this piece. Growing up a white woman (with no significant cultural background outside of my home country), in an upper middle class family, and in a small city (population less than 30 000) I can’t say a grew up with an awareness of racism (I knew it existed, and I knew movies had very few actors of colour in them, but it didn’t impact my every day life). Later, I realized the racism I encountered as a young person was most often directed at the aboriginals from my country (especially where historical treatment of them was concerned). While poor representation and overarching stereotypes in Hollywood are concerns when trying to make sure that people can have role models and examples of powerful people from their own race, I think it concerns me even more to see that people believe these cheap, cardboard cutout style commentaries on whole cultures. It amazes me, considering how often I am forced to look at the world from perspectives other than my own, that any one could imagine a whole cultural group to be so shallow and indistinct from one another. Thank you, for this window into your formative years.